


telephasic workshop

by Elendraug



Category: Homestuck
Genre: ASMR, Aftercare, Body Paint, Bulges and Nooks, Canon Compliant, Catharsis, Clothed Sex, Consensual Kink, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Dream Bubbles, Drone Season 2018, Explicit Consent, Frottage, Illustrated, M/M, Making Out, Multiple Orgasms, Nook Eating, Oral Sex, Overstimulation, Past Character Death, Pony Play, Porn With Plot, Quadrant Confusion, Sober Gamzee Makara, Socks, Verbal Bondage, Weird Plot Shit, Wet & Messy, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-06-29 12:14:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15729204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug
Summary: CT: D --> But 100kCT: D --> The situation is very delicate I believeCT: D --> The highb100d would benefit from a proper enculturation into the aristocracyCG: I DON'T THINK HE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR ETIQUETTE LESSONS, OR HOW A TRUE GENTLEMAN IS TO GO ABOUT HANDLING A PROPER FUCKING HORSE TEAT





	telephasic workshop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> **Prompt:** _I’d really like to have Equius to get mashed by one of the Makaras with some bondage and pet/ponyplay involved. I want Equius to be the sub and I have a preference for the characters in troll form so some blood/caste play could be involved, but whether they’re in bubbles/no game/post game is all up to the writer/artist._
> 
> * * *
> 
> Hopy shit, what an _[S] Ride._ this has been.
> 
> I have listened to the first six Joker’s Cards and reread Act 5 to prepare for this. My phone also, appropriately, decided to update itself to Android Pie. 
> 
> This fic is additionally brought to you by Clown Shoes’ Tramp Stamp Belgian IPA, Ballast Point’s Victory at Sea porter, Founders’ Dirty Bastard, and Left Hand’s Sawtooth ale, all largely purchased for thematic reasons.
> 
> Here's a fraction of the playlist I put together over the past month. If you want just one song to listen to on a loop, "Olson" or any of the other BOC tracks would be a good choice.
> 
> ♫ boards of canada: [telephasic workshop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhzAfiOl_c) | [turquoise hexagon sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqmR2eLopTE) | [roygbiv](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMRLlSPt7ak) | [olson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZnOROFSyp8) | [open the light](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=643nXJGHH7E)  
> ♫ tame impala: [new person, same old mistakes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7mia9UMG4Y) (listen to rihanna's cover too) | [the moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OAUJgXlipY)  
> ♫ florence + the machine: [spectrum (calvin harris remix)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4-6Y_91v5I)  
> ♫ homestuck team: [purple bard](https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/purple-bard) | [indigo heir](https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/indigo-heir)  
> ♫ icp: [pass me by](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E7LZTV5kNI)
> 
> As a heads up, be aware that this fic contains discussion of canon violence and death, and a reference to glass cutting someone's hands, although none of it's detailed. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my friends who cheered me on. Extra thanks to my friend for the incredible illustration! Happy Drone Season, everybody.

> TC: If ThErE's StUfF yOu WaNt To GeT oFf YoUr ChEsT dUdE, lIkE i SaId I'm FuCkIn HeRe FoR a MoThErFuCkEr.  
>  TC: kInD oF lIkE a MiRaClE, hOw It'S aLwAyS tHeRe.  
>  TC: It NeVeR gOeS aWaY, yOu KnOw?  
>  CT: D --> No  
>  CT: D --> But I comprehend the sentiment

> _“Time is fluid here,” said the demon._
> 
> Neil Gaiman, _Other People_

* * *

Gamzee steps into the dreamspace, his poulaine toeing a path through the scattered robotics debris. Cables cross beneath his footfalls, tangled and tracing off into the dusty corners of a room that no longer has an attentive lusus to look after it. The inhabited mess is a familiar sight, a comfort after sweeps away from anything Alternian.

There’s motion at the desk, precision with proprietary tools, and each shift of his shoulders sends his hair settling in a new direction. 

As Gamzee approaches and gets a better view, it becomes clear that he’s stripping wires. For what purpose, he can only speculate, and the train of thought begins and ends with mechanical mischief that’s out of his wheelhive.

He pays careful attention to the intensity of Equius’ focus, to the delicate manipulation of fragile filaments, as he sifts through the materials on the desktop, sorting out his supplies. He groups a set of similar colors together, then takes the wires between his fingertips individually to snip them in half, at equal lengths, before straightening them back out into a series of matched pairs. He spreads them apart, equidistant to separate the strands, and starts again on a new section.

Gamzee is uninterested in any of the engineering itself; it’s the finesse with which Equius clips the casing, just enough to slip it away to expose the copper within, that has him fascinated, his methodology as riveting as the kaleidoscopic colors of the mutable miracle modus. 

“You smashin’ some shit to pieces, my invertebrother?”

Equius turns at last to look at him, his eyes white, brighter than his sclerae ever were in life: as bleached as the sugar on LOLCAT.

“Not anymore.” He picks his shattered shades up from his desk and replaces them on his face, and further obfuscates Gamzee’s chances of discerning much of his expression. “It’s not the same here. I don’t break things unless I want to.”

“I thought you pretty much always wanted to. Didn’t that shit lift your mood?” Gamzee steps over a snapped arrow. “At least, that’s how the fuck it was back when I knew you.”

“It doesn’t cross my mind.” Equius sets down the tool he’s been using; the handle is intact. “It’s no longer reflexive.”

“Then some motherfuckin’ congratulations are in order, don’t you think?” 

Equius stands up from his chair, an object platonic enough not to have linguistic variation. “Why?”

It’s larger than the original question, casts a wider net, and Gamzee’s well aware that this is the case. He unbuttons his hood to free his horns from the fabric, and lets it drop.

“Because, my dude, ain’t addiction a powerful thing?”

Equius studies him, his reapplied paint, his features more visible with the hood down. “What are you seeking in this place?”

“Can’t a guy pay his friend a motherfuckin’ visit?”

“Was that what we were in life?”

“If you wanna get into the finer fuckin’ nuance...” Gamzee shrugs, at ease. “You’re the one who called me _enemy_ , brother.”

“It’s the s—” Equius stops himself, trails into a low hiss. “I expected to relinquish this anger a long time ago.”

“And how long’s that?”

Equius avoids the question, stares at his face, calculates the spacing between the scars. “Have you appeared to offer me an explanation?” He takes a step closer. With his back straightened, and Gamzee no longer slouching, they’re the same height. “A justification?”

Gamzee takes a bow, looks up through unruly bangs. “I’m here to make your motherfuckin’ dreams come true, like I was your fairy god troll.”

“Then you’ve ascended, as so few of our race have?”

“I got secrets, but can’t just up and spill my guts about it all just yet.” He rights himself, and extends a hand out. “Let’s take a walk.”

Equius eyes him as warily as he can without his former eyes. “Is that a command?”

Gamzee lowers his hand but keeps it upturned; it's less insistent, still inviting. “It’s just a polite request, I guess.”

The codpiece is impossible not to notice, jutting impudently up towards Gamzee’s knuckles. 

“This strikes me as lewd.”

“After a while you kinda just stop noticing it.”

After a while, before the moment lingers much longer, he places his gloved hand in Gamzee’s and holds fast, despite the immediacy of clammy skin. Gamzee doesn’t flinch.

“Where are we going?”

“Wherever your whimsical-ass thinkpan gets its imagination on for.” Gamzee laces his fingers against the leather, from a moirail who knew better than to let good hide go to waste: the lone exception he’d allowed for, from the extermination of beasts.

Gamzee takes a step backward in Equius’ respiteblock, and another, until his shoes are sliding through sugar like sand, swept upward into dunes, capped with ceramic.

Equius moves with him.

“She told me what happened, when I arrived.”

Gamzee lifts his eyebrows, with scars clawed through the skin beneath them, breaking the otherwise defined lines into shorter segments. 

“Yeah?”

Equius does not let go.

He falls into stride alongside him, until they’re both facing sucrose stacked into ziggurats, in silhouette against the tea-stained sky.

Gamzee breathes in, and the atmosphere carries the scent of chai and matcha off winding tributaries, the rich colors steeped in their confluence. 

“I got stuff I wanted to tell you,” he says, cutting past cups and saucers. “Stuff I couldn’t tell anybody else.”

“You could have chosen any one of us, from an excruciating array of my selves.” His cleats leave stamped, regular indentations in the surface as he walks. “Why me, specifically?”

“Because you and me, we got more in store for us.” The sugar gives way to sand, dissolving to stick to his shoes as it meets a beach saturated with saltwater. “And I felt like I oughta set stuff right while I still could. I think I’m maybe supposed to.” 

“According to whom?”

Gamzee presses his free hand to his chest, closes his eyes, smells the sea. “It’s just what a motherfucker feels, right in his pump biscuit, and the feeling is how I know what I gotta do.” 

“Hm.”

With one hand he pulls his shoes off and leaves them on the beach. He flexes his toes into the sand. The recollected wind hits his hair. 

Gamzee opens his eyes.

“I think you hate the ocean too much.” 

“The rivalry is as old as our species.”

“That shit’s not anywhere much as true as what you think.” 

Without hesitation and with a steady grasp on Equius’ hand, Gamzee steps into the surf. Equius allows himself to be led forward; the seawater seeps into his socks.

“What will become of your footwear?”

“I gotta believe it’ll be there when I need it next.”

The waves lap against Equius’ shins, but he maintains his balance. “I am uncertain if I can swim.”

“You’re not gonna drown.” Gamzee tightens his hold as an assurance. “In what all I learned from human folklore, it’d be us to be the ones drowning motherfuckers, anyway.”

Equius follows him in until he feels his feet lift from beneath him. He kicks his legs, trying to tread water; Gamzee’s grip keeps him stabilized.

Gamzee pushes forward until they’re submerged up to their necks, and does not look back to his hive. 

“You know what dude from human myth might convince you to reconsider?”

Equius’ hair fans out around his head on the surface of the water. “Who?”

“Poseidon. Planet fucking Neptune. He who is moist.”

“I lack the context necessary to understand this allusion.”

“I’ll tell you later if you want.”

Gamzee lets himself to go utterly limp, carried by the current, horns tilted back into the water, to take in the sight of the purple clouds at the earlier edge of dawn.

At the outskirts of his awareness is an impression of Coriolis, of oppositional spirals, of antimatter. He doesn’t dwell on any of it.

After strenuous effort, Equius accepts his own buoyancy and floats alongside him. “You can tell me now.”

“Uh, so. I’ll try to get it right.” The water tugs at his hair, cradles his skull. “He was a god who wanted to be the patron troll of a city and he gave them horses, but they didn’t like the horses as much as they liked olives, so he got way pissed off.”

“Fortuitous for him that olives were in such ample supply, to calm him down.”

“I dunno that I can fuckin’ speak to it with that level of fidelity, but yeah, why not?”

“Despite my own typical predilections, I think that now... I would prefer the olives, too.”

Far above them, at a height that defies measurement, reality shatters in Cartesian approximation. It’s past the clouds, past the bubble itself, and with the wide horizon engulfing their vision, it’s all-encompassing. 

Gamzee drifts nearer to him, runs his fingers up along the underside of his wrist and forearm. “You gotta to stay close to me.”

“Could you explain the significance of our proximity?”

“I can go places you can’t.” He slides his fingertips down his arm, over his glove, before taking his hand back in his, secure. “And I got plot armor.”

“What?”

“What’s happening out there is something you don’t need to be part of now.” The waves rock them until their hair is weaving, entwined on the surface. “But you will later.”

“And staying within your vicinity will afford me the same protection?”

“Yeah. It will now, ‘cause we’re here together.” He watches the celestial interplay, his unguarded back offering ribbons like lures to the abyssal depths, unafraid of the aquatic fauna for the first time in his life; there’s no longer anything there to fear. “I had to come back for you.”

“Without intending any disrespect,” he begins, as the cracks in the sky splinter into further reminiscence of his ruined shades, “what design is there in seeking me out after you’ve executed me?”

Gamzee turns his head, the water taking his hair away from his face; he tilts himself to keep liquid from entering his ear. “I missed you, man.”

Equius kicks his legs to propel himself backwards through the waves, and the dawn of Alternia’s red sun retreats as the sky crossfades into the subterranean darkness of LOCAS. The water becomes still, brackish, lit with bioluminescence from a kingdom of fungi and their cohabitating insects. Gamzee is beside him, the inky darkness of his hair catching the turquoise ambience. 

“I spent only a short while here,” he explains. “I did not wish to persist in this isolation, and so advanced to Quartz and Melody with utmost swiftness.”

“You shouldn’t conceal your poems, dog.” Gamzee watches the ripples on the surface expand out, concentric, with every slight move he makes. “You got a natural gift for it.”

“I... will consider it.”

[ ](https://78.media.tumblr.com/0e33e548dbf73cb5c5f8018ccc4b0938/tumblr_pecn727A8v1qm5fm6o1_1280.png)

Far above them tower four waterfalls, radiant with the same glow, stationed at ninety degree intervals, each of them sending their own currents moving towards the ripples they’ve created. Gamzee lets his center of gravity shift, lets his feet tip down beneath the surface, and Equius takes his cue to do the same.

When they’re both treading water, with Gamzee’s toes touching his shins and sodden socks beneath the surface, Equius continues. “The weight of history leered over this place. Any opportunity I had to attempt the quests in my land was nixed when the demon destroyed it.”

“Nah, it was gone way before that.” Gamzee shakes his head; his damp hair sticks to his face, begins to smear the paint. “We both know Tavros was the only one who even motherfucking tried that shit. Don’t pretend like you did.” 

Equius stalls, then speaks. “What other topics did you intend to discuss?”

“I thought maybe you’d wanna get your learn on about your ultimate purpose in all this.” 

Equius glances away, to the edge of the water.

Gamzee catches his drift and takes his hand again as they swim to the shore. They seat themselves on stone steps leading towards a deeper recession into a cavern that no one has ever explored.

The instant they’re back on land, all evidence of submersion is gone from Gamzee’s clothing. Equius’ shirt and shorts cling to him with the weight of water until he notices Gamzee, and then it’s reset for him, as well, before he can truly consider it.

Gamzee sits cross-legged, hood still lowered, the ribbons dangling down his back to trail against the cave floor. He holds Equius’ hand in his lap, over his thigh instead of over the codpiece, and works his thumb against his fingers, where his glove exposes them.

“You’ve gotta have questions for me.”

“I do.”

“Then go on and motherfuckin’ ask.”

Equius clears his throat. “Highblood, I would... if I may be so brash, I would ask about my death.”

Gamzee unfastens Equius’ glove and slides the leather off his hand. “What about it?”

“I am certain I deserved it, as it was your estimation that it was appropriate for me to make my exit, and I’ve accepted it, but...”

“But motherfuckin’ what?”

“The timing strikes me as extemporaneous.”

“That noise is borderline fuckin’ heretical, is what.” He moves his thumb in motions that are not quite circles over the skin of Equius’ palm, scarred from so many broken glasses. “There’s no other time it could’ve been.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“I sure can.” Gamzee looks up from Equius’ hand to meet his gaze in what remains possible as eye contact. The brilliant teal of the glowing waterfalls highlights the purple that’s flooded into his irises, reflects in his tapetum lucidum. “Because once upon a motherfuckin’ time, that shit went down way too early, and all that’s left of that eventuality is an exploded-ass robot and one of two books that on their pages I used your blood to get my write on.”

“How did you come by this expository knowledge?”

“Motherfucking shenanigans.” He presses his thumb into the head line of his palm, at its origin, begun from his life line. “Next question.”

“Why then, then?”

“Because if you don’t die right then and there, the timeline’s got nowhere useful left to go to.”

Equius is silent, searching Gamzee’s face for further answers. 

Gamzee runs his thumb smoothly across the middle of his palm. “What’s on your mind, bro?” 

“What of Nepeta?”

“Her, too. Facts.”

“I must confess I’ve felt need to express the anxious guilt which I’ve built within my conscience.”

“Nice rhymes.” He traces his fingertip over the curve of the base of Equius’ thumb, down to the beat of an imagined pulse within his wrist, presumed continuous and necessary by its ghostly possessor. “What’d you say if I told you that you and her were gonna be happy again in ways you couldn’t possibly fuckin’ predict?”

“I would say that while I am known for skepticism, it would behoove me to believe in any fortune-telling coming from one of your class.”

“You think I’m predicting your fate?” He looks up again, his smile beginning to smudge the paint on his skin.

“Yes?”

“No.” Gamzee looks down, sweeps his fingertips up again, from his wrist to the center of his hand. “I’m done with all that. I’m just here telling you what’s the truth.”

“Oh.” He pauses, uncertain, and shifts his legs to let his cleats face out towards the water.

Gamzee shakes his head. “Keep it going, brother. Get it all the fuck off your chest. That’s what friends are fuckin’ for, am I right?”

“Er, did...” He struggles to find words. “Please excuse the fixation, but did you select how best to end my life?”

“Sort of. I knew what all had to happen, and that it had to be me making it happen, and once that fuckin’ sopor shit withdrew from my pan, I got a clearer view of what you’d been saying to me all those sweeps.”

Equius looks away, ashamed. “I apologize. It was improper for me to have wasted your time online such as I did.”

“Motherfucker, we shot the shit every _day_. That’s gotta count for something, and talking to you wasn’t the shit that was wasting my time back then.”

“When Karkat contacted me, and described his experience with you, his instructions to me were nearly unbearable.” 

In a deliberate choice, he mispronounces ‘nearly’ closer to ‘neigh-rly’, and Gamzee smiles again.

“Yeah. How fuckin’ unlucky, that my moirail-to-be does me dirty like that. Can’t blame him, though.”

Equius lifts his head. “Does luck matter?”

“What’s gotta happen has got to happen. You got sent to kill me, but I already knew I had to kill you first.” 

“You didn’t answer me, before.” Equius lowers his shades on his nose and stares at Gamzee over the top of them. “Did you choose?”

“You asked me all the time to do what I did to you. Getting sober helped me finally fuckin’ see that.” Gamzee looks back at him levelly. “You dying was in the cards all along. I wanted to give you what you motherfuckin’ wanted out of me while we were at it, and I may as well be the one to make that play out like it’s gonna anyway.”

Equius closes his eyes and bows his head. “It was an honor to die at your hands, sir.”

“That shit was like your beautiful dark twisted fantasy, wasn’t it?” He runs his thumb across the top of Equius’ palm. “You got to live the fuckin’ dream.”

“I... Did you, too?”

“Did I what?”

“Enjoy it.” Equius keeps his gaze aimed at the ground.

“Chin up, bro.” Gamzee sweeps his fingers through the sweat in the center of Equius’ hand. “Look at me and say what it is you’re fuckin’ asking.”

Equius runs his tongue over his teeth, across the spaces where they’re missing, where they’ll never grow back, and looks up over his shades. “Did you enjoy killing me?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes?”

“Oh, fuck yeah.”

“I, er. I’m...” Equius finally closes his fingers around Gamzee’s, trapping the sweat between their skin. “Tell me.”

“I know where all you end up, and that shit was the most beautiful kind of miracle I’ve ever gotten my motherfuckin’ peep on for. Brought a tear to my fuckin’ eyes.”

“And when you witnessed me as I expired? What then?”

“You wanna be a vicarious voyeur to your own death, huh?”

Equius hesitates, then nods.

“Nah.” He drags his teeth over his bottom lip, lightly, thinking. “You can read about it someday, is what. Don’t wanna ruin the suspense. What else?”

“Perhaps I still owe you further apologies for a deeper contrition. I’m sorry I confronted you and made you kill me.”

“Don’t even worry about it. If you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.”

“What?”

“It was a motherfucking joke.” He stretches his legs out, his bare feet beside Equius’ shod ones, and rests back on his hands, his palms flat on the stone. “I already told you, the whole thing had to happen.”

The movement has left Equius’ hand resting on Gamzee’s thigh. Bearing the previous warning about proximity in mind, he doesn’t move it.

He’s reluctant to move it, anyway, unless it’s with a different intent entirely.

“Sometimes the answers you really want get fuckin’ delayed, and you gotta think about what it’s like to be taking part in a story like that for your whole life.”

Equius’s hand is upturned, held still against Gamzee’s leg, the edge of his thumb very near the codpiece. “To practice patience?”

“Yeah. To get a deep understanding that there’s shit out there you can’t fuck with unless you’re real ready. Shit that’ll motherfucking nullify your ability to give a shit, if you fuck up and handle it recklessly.”

There’s more he’s not saying, and Equius waits, really watching him closely for the first time. His posture is relaxed, but no longer in the way he’d been when influenced by soporifics. He’s very much awake, and at ease in attire that matches his blood color. The three scars across his face interrupt the meticulous application of paint, but it’s already in need of a touch-up at the corners of his mouth and near his eyes. His hair twirls past his horns, cascading to stop just at his jawline, where the makeup blends out and cuts off.

Gamzee catches him staring.

“You wanna know your real ancestry, motherfucker?”

Equius flexes his fingers, straightening them against Gamzee’s thigh. “Tell me, and I will listen.”

“You and I were the same guy, once.” Gamzee looks at him directly, unblinking. “And we’re gonna be the same guy again.”

Equius narrows his eyes, accepting the statement but not processing it. “I don’t understand.” 

“You’re not gonna understand. Not yet, anyway. But you will.”

“Then... am I not descended from another hero of void?”

“You know what the void is, man?”

Equius shakes his head.

Gamzee smiles, inscrutable. “The void is a refrigerator on the ocean floor.”

The statement seems a non sequitur. Equius glances back to the shadowed cavern behind them. “At least one of us understands my aspect.”

“You still got time. You wanna take a motherfuckin’ shot at understanding mine?”

“Is it less perplexing than my own?”

Gamzee shrugs, and Equius can feel his thigh shift slightly beneath his hand. “That depends. How do you feel about getting your chill on and destroying some rage within yourself, with me?”

“I feel that I should be requesting the specifics of what, exactly..."

Equius stops speaking when he sees Gamzee watching his hand on his leg. He hasn’t made any move to relocate it, for numerous reasons.

“You still want me, motherfucker? After all these sweeps we’ve been separated?”

His hand is shaking, sweating, and he’s sure that he’s blue in the face. “Should I dare insinuate that my desires deserve equal gravitas within this discussion?”

Gamzee grins. “Does lust matter?”

“Can..." Equius nearly chokes on the sentence. His fingers tremble with the failed effort to keep them still. “Can I?”

“I think you fuckin’ should.”

Equius flips his hand to turn it the other way, to grip Gamzee’s thigh, his pinky edged against the striped hem of the lewd garment, his fingertips digging into the soft fabric of his pant leg. 

“If she and I, if we had to die,” he starts, blinking away sweat that’s beaded on his forehead and rolled down towards his eyes, “then my only regret, despite the integrity of my death, was that we, that you and I—”

“Now’s the time for it, man.” Gamzee sighs, through his nose. “You don’t gotta regret it anymore.”

“Highblood, forgive me.” Equius scoots to sit closer, draws his legs up towards him. “I didn’t realize what I was waiting for.”

Gamzee reaches over to rest his hand just above Equius’ left knee. “If you wanna fuck me, we can get that good shit on right now.”

“If... if it pleases you as well, I would like that. Very much.”

Gamzee lifts Equius’ hand from his thigh and presses a kiss to his palm. “I got another human story for you, dude.” 

Equius dares to inch closer, his pulse hammering in his throat. “Tell me.”

“It goes like this.” Gamzee raises his other hand to remove his shades from his face and set them on the stone floor. He leans in to kiss each of his eyelids, closed over eyes as white as blank paper. He lets go of his hand only when he’s lifted his own to cup the strong line of Equius’ jaw. “A man with musical talent walks into the underworld.”

And he’s transfixed; he can smell the costumed, oil-slick scent of the variant greys coating Gamzee’s face, of the mint that sealed in it place on his skin. “What next?”

“His rhymes are so wicked sick, they impress the god who’s guarding it.”

“And then?”

Gamzee works his hand into Equius’ long hair, separating the strands of it into three segments, held loosely between his fingers. “And this dude is so impressed, he lets that motherfucker go get his dead matesprit out of the afterlife and bring her back with him.”

“What... what quadrant is this, sir?”

“Quadrants ain’t shit but a foil for human drama, Equius.” He closes his eyes, bridges the distance. “Doesn’t matter.”

Gamzee kisses him with unspeakable practice, and Equius elevates his arms to encircle him, his hands on his shoulder blades, the ribbons dancing over his knuckles as he pulls him closer. He’s slender and lithe, and it’s easy to let his hands slide down his spine and feel out the curve of his back.

“How long have you known that I wanted you?” Equius asks, exhaling against him.

“At this point?” Gamzee kisses him again, quickly. “Forever and a very long day.”

Equius touches his forehead to Gamzee’s; with the new angle, their horns lock, if only for an instant. 

“Do my hands hurt you?” he asks, all too accustomed to knowing his own strength.

“Existentially? Never.” Gamzee seats himself in Equius’ lap, his codpiece nudged against his abs through the taut cloth of the tank top. “And not much could be even half as bad as the harshness I’ve fuckin’ encountered.”

Equius skates his left hand down to grope Gamzee’s ass, and raises his right to touch his face. Gamzee grinds down against him, nuzzles into his hand, drives paint into the leather of his glove.

“Does it vex you?” Equius asks, itching to know more. “Having to endure such hardships?”

“No.” Gamzee works to remove Equius’ glove, and tosses it towards the other one. “Not since I can speak on my own behalf again.”

Equius cups his cheek, runs his thumb over Gamzee’s eyebrow, feeling out the stripe where the delicate hair is missing.

Gamzee sighs and leans into it, his eyes closing, his thighs closing around Equius’ hips. “You want a bard to place some motherfuckin’ epic storytelling inside your hear ducts?” 

“Anything.” His hands are on his back again, moving over his shoulder blades, past the places on the garment where something once had been attached.

“Get yourself ready,” he says, his chest pressed flush to Equius’, “for the one song that never fucking ends.”

Equius kisses him, open to his tongue and the touch of his teeth, and knows he’s at risk of soaking through his shorts.

Gamzee brushes Equius’ hair back to tuck it behind his ear, and whispers the words, his mouth wet from making out. “Welcome to the motherfuckin’ notion of circumstantial simultaneity.”

He listens, and runs a hand up along Gamzee’s arm, to the hem of his shorter sleeve, where it overlaps the underlayer, nested. His body is acrobatic, accentuated by the apparel, and Equius needs to know more, to know what they’d feel like, entwined on the floor.

“You are a part of an infinite expansion, limited only by its levels.”

As he speaks to him, imparting a weird wisdom accrued over a rhizomatous existence, Equius disregards all else, the churn of the waterfalls fading into filtered background sounds. There’s a settling warmth in the nape of his neck, at the crown of his head, in the hair on his arms.

He curls his arms around Gamzee’s chest.

“Every stroke of your design was decreed to be by a computer pencil.” Gamzee kisses his throat, just beneath his jawline, leaving paint in his wake. His voice fluctuates. “You are now tuned into the miracle of a new beginning for the two of us.”

Equius returns his hands to Gamzee’s thighs, holding him but not in place, tense with the intimacy of petting him past anything pitiful.

“What would you have of me?”

Gamzee kisses him, between his eyes, at his procerus. “I’d ride you clear through to your highest puissances.”

There’s exhaustion pooled in the skin beneath Equius’ eyes, of previously silenced longing. “Is this location where you wish to be? As my superior.”

“Getting my cozy on in your lap? Yeah.” He traces his touching over Equius’ collarbone, at the skin outlined by the tank top. “But in this cave? Nah. Let’s go.” 

Gamzee keeps contact with him, runs his fingers down his muscled arm until he’s taken hold of his hand again, and stands up while urging him to do the same. Equius obeys, eager to accommodate, and falls into step beside but just behind him as they leave the Land of Caves and Silence in the distance and descend through the pitch blackness of the passageway. Gamzee’s footfalls are inaudible; Equius’ cleats send a bright, sharp sound ringing out as they strike the ground, as it transitions from stone to steel.

When the tunnel opens back up, they’re on the meteor, and with the myriad flotsam of the Furthest Ring, it’s initially impossible to discern whose memory it is. The presence of both indigo and olive blood on the floor is the determinant factor, however, and Equius takes his place, kneels in the spot he lost his life, and lowers his head in deference.

He kisses the back of his hand. “What would please you, sir?”

“This shit’s about both of us, motherfucker.” Gamzee slides his fingers through Equius’ hair, stopping only to test the height of his horns, sensitive where one of them snapped ages ago. “What all is it that you want?”

Equius raises his head to expose his throat, to offer the indigo blood pulsing through his jugular, where Gamzee’s face paint is already smudged across his skin. “Whatever you’ll give me.”

“Shhh.” Gamzee runs his knuckles over Equius’ high cheekbone, and Equius leans into it. “Let me up and take care of you, then.”

Gamzee crouches as Equius genuflects, utterly motionless as Gamzee rakes his fingers through his hair and begins to braid it in sections, a demonstration of showmanship. Equius keeps himself still and allows for it, his eyes directed forward as if with blinders. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even consider it, until Gamzee combs out each braid with his fingers and lets his hair flow free again.

“You wanna slam a little, bro? Wanna get down with the clown?” Gamzee speaks against his ear, with teeth sharper than arrowheads. “You wanna have sex with me?”

“Your deliberate lack of decorum is extremely improper, yet intoxicating.”

“Yes or no, dude?”

Equius shudders as he responds. “Yes.”

Gamzee slips his arms around Equius’ waist. “You ever done this before?”

“No.”

“You cool with me being the first?”

“Yes.”

“You cool with being my last?”

The sentence is laden with significance enough to throw him for a loop. Dizzy with the implications, he nods, his pulse stampeding in his temples. “Of course.” 

“Well, all right, then.” He lays his hand on Equius’ back, lightly guiding him forward. “Get on all fours.”

Equius does so, and Gamzee keeps a hand flat to his vertebrae, as one would circle a skittish horse, to back up behind him and reach beneath his ribs to unbutton his shorts. “I’m gonna make you come like the Dark Carnival comes to town.”

“How so?”

“With a vengeance.”

“Fiddlesticks,” he says, and Gamzee chuckles, with his fingertips tugging his shorts down past the stocky musculature of his thighs, then off one lifted leg at a time, over the cleats.

“We gotta do better than that, fucker.”

Equius waits with utmost patience as Gamzee keeps his fingers against him but reaches out past the visible edge of the map, to retrieve a bow from Equius’ respiteblock. He snaps the bowstring and holds the riser in front of Equius’ mouth until he takes it between his remaining teeth.

“Don’t break it,” he says, and Equius does not intend to.

Gamzee slips behind him again, kneeled and sitting on his own heels. He leans forward until Equius can feel his breath at the backs of his thighs, as he lowers his mouth to his nook and licks him, tasting him on his tongue.

“Goddamn, you’re as wet as I am.” Gamzee drags his tongue between his folds again, lapping up the slickness, and Equius grunts against the wood. “You’re motherfucking dripping back here.”

He ducks his head and licks at the spot beneath his bone bulge, flicking his tongue and sucking until Equius begins to unsheathe himself with a low moan, the sound altered by the presence of the bow blocking his vocalizations.

“That’s it, motherfucker. Let it all out for me.” His breath is potent against Equius’ skin, cooler than he is, although not quite as cool as the ocean was, earlier. Gamzee slips his tongue into his nook, his face pressed so tightly that his paint is left smeared on Equius’ ass, as tangible temporary proof of their tryst.

“Please,” Equius breathes, with air that’s no longer strictly necessary for his extended survival, there only for his own residual insistence. His enunciation is mangled. “Please, highblood, if you would be so inclined—” 

“Say my name, motherfucker.” Gamzee sucks at the base of his bulge between words, his mouth coated with indigo-tinted fluid. “Like we’re friends and shit.”

“Gamzee,” Equius says, around the wood, and Gamzee hums his approval. 

“That shit’s white hot.” He exhales against Equius’ quivering nook. “I can’t wait to get us both sexually stimulated.”

Equius sinks onto his elbows, resting his weight against the floor, against the indigo and olive splatters soaked into the tile. It’s then, up close, that he notices purple bloodstains interspersed amongst the rest of it.

Gamzee grabs his ass, spreads him open with his thumbs, and licks into him.

“I’m—”

“Yeah, you are.”

Equius’ bulge unsheathes itself fully with a wet noise, and as soon as he’s exposed, he finds himself enclosed within Gamzee’s grip, twisting against his fingers. He grunts against the bow, refuses to bite down any harder than is already necessary to keep it lodged within his mouth.

Gamzee runs the pad of his thumb up along the short length of him, feeling out the give, the slickness of it. “You want me inside you, bro?”

Equius looks over his shoulder, around the straight black curtain of his hair, and sees that Gamzee has abandoned his god tier attire for the black t-shirt of their younger sweeps, and the pajama pants that accompanied it, with all decoration on the cloth reminding him of his societal standing. 

“Yes,” he says, as well as he can with a weapon immobilized in his mouth.

“Yeah?” Gamzee lifts himself up on his knees, reaches toward to take the bowstring halves into his hands, and holds them like reins. “You want me to fill you up like a pie, motherfucker?”

“That’s terrible.” Equius sinks his teeth into the splintering wood, and speaks awkwardly around it. “But yes.”

“You up and motherfuckin’ got it.”

Gamzee lets the bowstrings drop. He pulls his pants down, and pushes his hips flush against Equius’ ass. Equius huffs, overwhelmed by the contact, and settles further towards the floor.

“You ready, motherfucker?” Gamzee’s slim frame presses against Equius’ stockier build. “You ready to get served like a dude on motherfucking butler island?”

Equius braces himself on his elbows and inhales sharply around the bow, his teeth not quite as sharp as Gamzee’s, a fraction less deadly. 

“Oh, brother, I could have you eating out of my hand.” He slides his fingers up along Equius’ side, shoving his tank top up, to stroke over his grubscars. “Is this good?”

“Yes.”

Gamzee runs his hand along Equius’ calf, up his striped sock, over the straining, powerful muscles in his leg. “Is it enough?”

“No.”

“You want me fuckin’ inside you?”

“Yes.”

“You took an arrow to the knee for me. You wanna be motherfuckin’ tied to me forever?”

“ _Yes._ ”

Gamzee sighs heavily as his bulge unsheathes, twisting up between Equius’ legs and sliding into place between the lips of his nook. It’s larger, heftier, and seeks Equius’ bulge on sheer instinct, slickly curling together for their mutual satisfaction.

Equius places the heels of his palms against the floor of the lab, to momentarily take the pressure off his elbows. He dips his head to look beneath himself and sees indigo and purple droplets hitting the floor. 

He speaks around the riser, badly.

“Highblood—”

“Say my name.”

Equius opens his jaw to let go of the bow, and it clatters to the floor as he abandons all pretense. “Gamzee!”

“That’s right.” He shifts to position himself properly, and his bulge easily finds its way into Equius’ nook, and slots itself into the open, accessible wetness that Equius has offered to him. “Fuckin’ say it.”

“ _Fuck!_ ”

“Oh, fuck, that’s right. You got it.” Gamzee moves his hips to drive deeper, the tip of his bulge seeking Equius’ seedflap, his full girth well established within the tight confines of his nook.

Indigo fluid seeps out and runs down the backs of his thighs, and Equius cries out again. “Fuck! Fuck me!”

“That’s what I up and like to hear.” He slams into him like poetry, rhythmic and measured, attuned to what he enjoys. “You like this, man?”

Equius gasps for breath, ragged. “One hundred percent.”

“Good.”

Gamzee stills himself to remove his shirt, and over his shoulder Equius can see a plethora of penetrative projectile scars that have left marks on his torso.

“What...?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gamzee assures him. “I’m okay with it.”

Equius decides to permit himself to stop fixating, and lays his head down on his forearm, flush to the floor as Gamzee’s thick bulge twists within him, as his own twists against his stomach.

When Equius’ breathing becomes even more irregular, Gamzee slips his hand down between his legs again to offer an outlet, to provide fingers to curl against. It’s with erratic inhalations and relative silence that Equius comes, his genetic material seeping out and flowing back against Gamzee’s bulge in such a rush that it leaks down the back of his legs, into the stripes of his socks, and ultimately into a deep blue puddle on the floor.

“Don’t stop,” he begs, effusive, emboldened by his orgasm. “You’re exquisite.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Gamzee keeps fondling his bulge, reaching around as he lets his weight rest on Equius’ sturdy back. A mixture of their combined sweat and Gamzee’s paint has streaked across Equius’ shoulder blades, the distribution in line with Gamzee’s thrusting, brushing makeup into the fibers of his tank.

Equius pushes his hips back to meet him, rocking into it, lost in the sensation of being mounted and filled. His bulge wraps around Gamzee’s fingertips, and he tosses his head to throw his hair from his face, with limited success as it sticks to his forehead with sweat.

“You still want me to boss you around a bit?” Gamzee asks, his fingertips teasing downward, to slide over the entrance of his nook, where he’s spread wide by Gamzee’s bulge.

Equius nods, his face against the floor, flushed and breathing hard, in through his nose and out through his mouth.

“Then motherfuckin’ come for me again.” Gamzee keeps his ring and pinky fingers slipping against the lips of Equius’ nook, and closes his other two fingers and thumb around the base of his bulge. “Fuckin’ do it, if I’m fucking you so good. Do it.”

Equius bucks his hips back against him, and lets his claws dig into the floor, cracking the tile. He groans, low in his throat, until Gamzee’s sinking into him so completely that he shifts into hissing, eyes closed, shivering through another wave of genetic fluid coursing around Gamzee’s bulge and running in rivulets down the established paths stained on his legs.

“That’s it, motherfucker. Let it all motherfucking go.” Gamzee rubs his thumb along Equius’ bulge as it twitches against his fingers. The noises Equius is making are addictive, and seem ready to be habit-forming if time would permit it. He teases at his grubscars, his fingertips feeling out his rib cage beneath the drenched tank top, and keeps his hips moving slowly and continuously. “Look at you, fuckin’ succumbing to the little double death.”

Equius flexes around him, his breathing steadier, slowed and deep. He smiles, softly, to himself at first, and then cranes his neck to look back at Gamzee, with his eyelids heavy over eyes that are simultaneously one hundred percent red, green, and blue.

Gamzee comes with quieted cursing, spoken like incantations against the skin surrounding Equius’ spine, and he too unleashes a flood of fluid from his nook, down along his inner thighs to join the existing mess on the floor with no buckets in sight.

Equius relinquishes all strength to collapse against the floor, sated and spiritually satisfied to boot. Gamzee pulls out, reluctant, and lies down enough to engulf Equius in an embrace, moving them away from the damaged, multiply-stained pieces of tile and the broken bow.

“How do you fuckin’ feel?” He kisses the crown of his head, between his horns. “You feel good?”

“Yes, but...”

“But what, man?”

Equius laughs, and it might be the only time Gamzee’s heard it. “I need a towel.”

Gamzee snorts, and rolls onto his back enough to just sort of reach over and grab one from the melded dream space, retrieved fresh and clean from Equius’ respiteblock. He unfolds it and guides it between Equius’ thighs, to soak up some of the blended genetic material still dripping out from his nook. It’s at least enough to make him more comfortable; their surroundings will have to reset on their own, eventually, if the moment becomes forgotten.

Gamzee’s own clothing is returned to him without fanfare, in a split second of thought formed. Equius makes no move to address his disheveled state, and, mindful of his horns, rests his head on Gamzee’s shoulder. He drapes his arm across the screen-printed symbol on Gamzee’s shirt, and hooks a leg over Gamzee’s, without his shorts but still with shoes and socks.

“All we need now’s a goshdarned pile of clutter,” Gamzee says, running his fingers through Equius’ hair, unperturbed by the sweat. He traces his toes over Equius’ socks. “Then we could keep this feelings jam going for a while, like some truly rude preserves that just don’t stop.”

“Perhaps we could retire to my respiteblock,” Equius offers. “And exchange verses of slam poetry.”

“Aw, damn, that’d be fun as fuck, but this is it,” he says, as an affirmation to both of them. “This is all you got left to motherfuckin’ do.”

“Gamzee,” he sighs, shakily, like a prayer, like fucking magic. “Don’t leave me here.”

“We’ll see each other soon,” he says, soothing, whispered like lyrics. “Real soon, and then? Motherfuckin’ permanently.”

Equius hides his face against the black fabric of his shoulder and says nothing. There’s wetness that seeps into his shirt. 

“Hey, hey now. I got you.” Gamzee hugs him tighter. “I wasn’t gonna let this pass me by, dude.”

“Don’t go.”

“Oh, motherfucker, you and me, the first time? That was the motherfuckin’ rough draft horse.” He smiles, and kisses his temple, against his hair. “A prototype, like the shit you work on. Isn’t that what you’re all up and used to? We’ve been fully fuckin’ realized, bro.”

“Please.”

“I’ll come back,” he says, gently. “I promise you’re gonna be happy in your future, man.”

Equius pushes the long-broken bridge of his nose into Gamzee’s shoulder. “I’m happy now.”

“Now is relative.” There’s purple-tinted saline suspended on top of the perfectly applied creme liner, and if it were anyone else, he’d be afraid of harming them with intensity of the hug. But Equius, he can handle it. “Now is forever, my guy.”

Equius cracks, then, like so many splinters in paradox space. “I can’t.”

“You can, yo. You can, and you’re going to.” He threads his fingers into his hair, cradles his head against his shoulder. “I’ll come back, but I gotta go.”

“Please, please don’t. Don’t leave me here.”

The scene shifts, until they’ve just barely crossed the threshold back into his respiteblock, surrounded by enough metallic scrap to assemble any number of piles, if the timeline would simply approve it. For once, he’s unable to linger.

“Equius,” he says, sharp teeth against his widow’s peak. “Equius, I wish you could already have seen what I’ve seen.”

“Then tell me, and I’ll try to understand.”

“If you only could understand this clownshoes operation, sir.” He gathers him close and kisses his sweat-soaked hair. “I thought I understood it at the time, when you last saw me, but now I've had time to think it over, and it’s more than we all ever fuckin’ imagined.”

“ _Please._ ”

“I’m sorry.” Gamzee tilts Equius’ chin up with his fingertips, and kisses him soundly. He extracts himself from the embrace and stands. “I fuckin’ am. Truly.”

Equius curls in on himself, miserable. “Goodbye.”

“Well, okay. Goodbye.” Gamzee pulls on his sugared shoes, rich purple like the rest of his god tier attire, all now back upon his person. He raises his hood. “But you had better believe I will see you again soon, Equius.”

Equius stares up at the high ceiling of the block, then closes his eyes against it all, behind his resituated shades. “Yes, you will.”

* * *

> _Where is the wonder? Now if a person could prove the absolute like to become unlike, or the absolute unlike to become like, that, in my opinion, would indeed be a wonder; but there is nothing extraordinary, Zeno, in showing that the things which only partake of likeness and unlikeness experience both. Nor, again, if a person were to show that all is one by partaking of one, and at the same time many by partaking of many, would that be very astonishing. But if he were to show me that the absolute one was many, or the absolute many one, I should be truly amazed._
> 
> Socrates, _Parmenides_

> _I'm constantly mining content from my older work to incorporate into Homestuck. The instances of this are hard to quantify. Let's talk about Equius again. Lot's of people thought he had depth beyond his gags, and that's definitely true. But that wasn't what was relevant about him, to me personally. He was always the troll personification of everything like Humanimals I ever did and put on the internet. (Hence is lusus is basically a Humanimal.) I used to do all sorts of weird stuff, reviewing obscene furry pornography, making weird collages involving horses, and just a whole lot of bizarre shit that didn't make much sense, but I thought was funny. The whole span of these endeavors was quite trollish in nature, and you will agree if you peruse Humanimals. The fact that it puts some people off is part of what makes it funny. So Equius was that entire arena of trollish content, rolled into a character. That's why I was STRONGLY committed to maintaining the integrity of his arc, as I defined it. It was more important by far for me to adhere to his role as the fucked up dude who embodies all that stuff than have him blow it by doing something heroic. He believed he died a death of supreme integrity. And so do I._
> 
> _Don't get me wrong, he was still a gag character. But this was the precise nature of the gag, an homage to an entire vein of humor I used to deal in copiously. He, like some others, trolled you in life, and then trolled you in death. What happened in between, you ask? Well, that was just you falling in love._
> 
> _Whistles was a graphic novel I did years ago. It's another thing I've mined ideas from, which have specifically begun to show themselves lately with Gamzee's turn. And oddly, there's some of Whistles rolled into Equius too. If Equius seemed to accelerate to a point of depth faster than others, maybe it's because he was built on quite a payload of founding concepts, all revolving around perversity._
> 
> Andrew Hussie, February 2011


End file.
